Chateauneuf-du-Pape Amazing 2010 Chateauneuf-du-Pape

Chateauneuf-du-Pape Amazing 2010 Chateauneuf-du-Pape

"As I predicted last year in Issue 197, 2010 is a great vintage that is extremely close in quality to 2007. The wines are not as exuberant, flamboyant or unctuously textured as the top 2007s, but they have the advantage of being slightly more delineated/focused with greater freshness. They are just as high in alcohol as the 2007s, but the fermentations of the 2010s were easier, and the wines come across as having slightly higher acids. The downside is that after abundant crops in 2007 and 2009, the 2010 harvest was tiny, largely because the Grenache crop had significant losses due to problems during and after the flowering. It was down by 30-40%, which has made the production levels of most of the Grenache-dominated wines much smaller than normal. Moreover, the greatness of the 2010 vintage has been widely recognized throughout the world, so the wines are being gobbled up at almost unprecedented rapidity... - Robert Parker.